


Worn Pages

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her voice in the back of his head reminds him: ‘Oh but Fitz, the book is better than the movie.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worn Pages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ultron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultron/gifts).



> As part of a fic swap! My prompt word was "Book"

The SHIELD Academy isn’t that different than University had been – studious students milling about, all years old than him, with academic discussions the usual lunch room chatter. Though this time he could call out the title _Doctor_ to a room and have every face whip around to look at him.

Intellectual equals, that’s what they were supposed to be, but Fitz had only found one person that might be closer to that. If only she wasn’t such a _girl_.

“Simmons, come on, your hair is straight enough,” Fitz says, his voice a slight whine, because they’re showing a movie down in the boiler room, and the small part of him that had as a child dreamed of being a Paleontologist wants nothing more than to be sitting down there and critiquing every aspect of the film.

At this rate they’re going to be late.

She just tuts, seeming to slow down her straight ironing as if to spite him, “Honestly, Fitz, patience is a virtue.”

“Being late isn’t.”

He can see her eye roll in the mirror this time before she replies, “We have plenty of time.”

Ten minutes, they had _ten minutes_ when did Jemma get it into her head that _that_ was plenty of time.

“You do know I have the movie and a perfectly working laptop,” Jemma says, “There’s absolutely no reason to be in such a rush.”

“It’s the environment, mob mentality,” Fitz says.

This time Jemma meets his gaze in the mirror, her eyebrows raising ever so slightly, surprised at his comment or disbelieving in the truth of his words.

“Also I want to see which one of those jerks from my advanced mechanics lab jump when the Velociraptors show up.”

The admittance is worth it, because a second later Jemma is laughing that beautiful laugh, it’s not perfect or graceful, but it’s warm enough that Fitz cannot help but smile like a fool at the sound of it.

When she stops laughing, she asks, “Have you ever read the book?”

But he shakes his head in reply, “I prefer watching over reading.”

“Oh Fitz,” she says, voice full of mirth still, “One day I’ll make sure you read it.”

They never end up making it down to the Boiler Room, a lecture of literature turns into a verbal sparring match, and instead he spends the evening piled up on her dorm room bed with the quilts her mother sent from home, as the movie plays out on a tiny computer screen.

\---

He’s not conscious to remember any of this, his brain barely holding onto to being alive, lungs barely remembering how to work properly.

But he’ll be told about it later, at midnight over a cup of far to sugary tea given at the hands of a friend, the story of how Jemma sat by his bedside and read a book aloud until her throat went hoarse, because she’d read a theory about coma patients being talked to.

A part of him wonders if she imagined him responding to her reading, just as he imagines her sitting across from him long after his cup of tea gets cold.

\---

He volunteers to clean out her bunk, because it’s the least that he could do. It’s not going to be easy – Fitz knows that before he even punches in the familiar code to the room Jemma had called her own on the SHIELD base – if it was going to be anyone it should be him.

At least, that had been what Fitz had told Coulson mere hours before when the topic had come up.

_She has been gone too long for them to keep hoping that she would come back_ , that was what Coulson had said, _it was time they all moved on_.

Even if it seemed impossible.

And impossible is just about how he feels standing in the doorway to Jemma’s room.

The air is stale, it’s sole inhabitant having disappeared many months before, but if Fitz closes his eyes and breathes in he can almost feel a ghost of her still here. A hint of something familiar and uniquely Jemma lingers about the space.

Looking at this room Fitz could almost imagine she hadn’t been gone that long. Her bed sheets were pristinely pressed in place (as they always had been at the academy) with a knitted quilt covering it all up with vibrant colors, on top of which there is an outfit laid atop the sheets as though picked out for a special occasion. A novel that Jemma must have been in the middle of reading rests on one of her pillows, pink bookmark jutting out from the pages. And a cup of tea half drunk and now long gone cold sits next to an alarm clock that had given up ringing off its too many missed alarms ago.

Saying, “I miss you,” to the empty air, doesn’t seem nearly good enough – and it certainly doesn’t make Jemma come back to him – but a small part of him doesn’t feel entirely like breaking anymore.

It’s easier after that, to scrub at his eyes quickly, and pack everything he can into carefully labeled boxes, because if Jemma comes back she’ll want to know where everything is.

_When_ , he thinks to himself, _When not if_.

But his mind has been a fickle friend for the past year, and reminding himself not to give up hope gets harder every day.

There’s one thing though, after the day of sorting that doesn’t get packed into the boxes. His fingers hover over the cover of the novel she had left half-finished, a story he instinctively knows that she has read before.

Her voice in the back of his head reminds him: _‘Oh but Fitz, the book is better than the movie_.’

\---

Getting Jemma back is something he hadn’t even thought to dream of, so when it happens, he can’t really be blamed for standing there like a fool and blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind.

“I read the book,” is probably the worst words to say when being reunited with a long lost best friends.

But it brings a smile to face that he’s missed beyond reason, as she says, “If I had known me leaving was what it would take to get you to sit down and read, well-“

“Don’t say you’ll leave again.”

“I won’t.”  

 


End file.
